Return of the Sun

Posted on March 3, 2024

This one started as a night scene, trying out a new sky technique in Cinema4D.   As is usually the case when creating the sky first, I had to think of something for the foreground.    I’d been meaning to learn Gaea’s “Ice Floe” node and this seemed like the perfect time.   Then when I started putting together the foreground I decided to create a day scene first and got a little distracted with it.   

The night scene is still to come but I hope you enjoy this arctic sunrise while I’m still perfecting that C4D sky technique 😄

Shoals of Avernus

Posted on February 23, 2024

Going back to my theme this year of re-working some of my older classics.   The original goal with this piece was simply to re-imagine “Space Vista II” from way way back in 1997 with some better texturing for the planets.   I wanted something in the foreground this time so I used Gaea to create some interesting landforms that looked alien but wouldn’t take the focus from the sky.   Lastly I added some cumulus in the distance to give the scene a little more scale.

Had to give it a new title though because I wasn’t really thinking about good names back when I first created this piece in 1996 (a year before I posted my site).   They were simply files on my hard drive back then 🙂  Hope you enjoy it!

High Country (Spring)

Posted on February 19, 2024

Soon after creating “High Country (Winter)” I knew I wanted to try to render the scene in springtime.   Unfortunately I didn’t foresee what a technical challenge that would be.   VUE fought me every step of the way, even on my powerful Rochallor workstation.   I fought through it though and managed to banish winter from the high country.   I hope you enjoy it and that spring comes soon where you live.

Trade Wind Moonlight

Posted on February 13, 2024

I hadn’t really planned on doing a night entry in my Trade Wind series but after adding the cumulus clouds to the day version I thought it would be fun to light them up from the inside with lightning under the moonlight.   I hope you have enjoyed this little midwinter virtual getaway!

Trade Wind Daylight

Posted on February 9, 2024

Happy Friday! I thought it might be interesting to give a totally different look to the “Trade Wind” sky with some towering cumulus clouds in the distance.   I know this might be a bit too sunny for a lot of folks but I hope some of you enjoy it.

EDIT (2/11/24): A few folks mentioned that the beach was blown out in the original render and it was difficult to see where the water ended and the sand began. I’ve rendered a new version which should fix this, and at the same time I adjusted the camera settings so you can see a bit more of the beach. It’s a wider field of view than the twilight version but the foreground is a bit more important in this version. Thanks for the feedback everyone!!